The field of the invention relates generally to computer-implemented programs and, more particularly, to a computer-implemented system for enhanced automated visual inspection of a physical asset.
Known methods of visual inspection of physical assets include the use of optical devices inserted within such physical assets without human entrance. Such known methods provide benefits by allowing for rapid visual analysis of complex physical assets that may be inaccessible to human technicians without disassembly or other servicing. In some such known cases, disassembly or servicing of complex physical assets may take hours to perform. During such disassembly or servicing, many such complex physical assets must be rendered temporarily inoperable. Therefore, known methods of visual inspection rapidly expedite analysis of internal conditions of complex physical assets and reduce downtime that may be caused by disassembly or servicing.
Known methods and systems of visual inspection of physical assets involve sending visual data to human technicians capable of diagnosing conditions of the complex physical assets. Human technicians may review such visual data using monitors, computers, or other displays. In many known methods and systems of visual inspection, human technicians will overlay collected visual data onto a three-dimensional engineering model and manually match features between the collected visual data and the three-dimensional model. Such overlaying, comparison, and matching may be very time consuming. Known methods and systems of visual inspection may also face the complexity that when visual data is received by the human technician, it is often too late to obtain new physical measurements that have not been previously collected by field engineers. In such cases, new physical measurements may only be collected on the next inspection of the physical asset.
Such known methods and systems of visual inspection of physical assets using optical devices do not facilitate efficient and effective identification of the component corresponding to visual data sent from the optical device to the human technician. In many known complex physical assets there are numerous components and sub-components. Review of the architectural details of each component and sub-component is often a necessary and time-consuming aspect of using known methods of visual inspection. Such review is necessary, however, in order to ensure that the human technician understands the exact component or sub-component associated with visual data. Misidentification may be logistically and financially expensive.